For Pornographers, Internet's Virtues Turn to Vices — The Internet was supposed to be a tremendous boon for the pornography industry, creating a global market of images and videos accessible from the privacy of a home computer. For a time it worked, with wider distribution and social acceptance driving a steady increase in sales.

The Next Web Conference happened today in Amsterdam. It was a one day event hosted by Scott Rafer of MyBlogLog fame and was a mix of presentations from startups and keynotes from various people in the industry. Marc Canter from Broadband Mechanics and Jeff Clavier a VC from the valley assumed the role of …

Hanging out in the Zoho data center — I am here in the Zoho data center. I'm hanging out with Kris of Zooomr. We're working on getting Zooomr back up. I am entertaining the hoardes that are hanging out in the chat room. — He is working on getting Zooomr back up. The machines are coming back up.

The Google 'ick' factor … SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) — Google Inc. bills the latest twist on its online maps as "Street View," but it looks a bit like "Candid Camera" as you cruise through the panorama of pictures that captured fleeting moments in neighborhoods scattered across the country.

Zero-day sales not "fair" — to researchers — Two years ago, Charles Miller found a remotely exploitable flaw in a common component of the Linux operating system, and as many enterprising vulnerability researchers are doing today, he decided to sell the information.

Hugo Chavez coming out with his own PC? — Hugo Chavez, the cartoonish, combative leader of Venezuela, wants to come out with his own PC that he will then distribute to citizens in the region, according to sources in the PC industry who have been contacted by Venezuelan officials.

F-Secure CEO: There's more malware than ever — Kimmo Alkio, CEO of F-Secure, recently rejoined the antivirus vendor from fellow Finnish company Nokia. silicon.com recently caught up with Alkio to discuss the security landscape, how governments should handle hackers, the need for a dot-bank domain name …

Second Life Server Code to Stay Closed Longer — Many developers have been eagerly awaiting Linden Lab to make good on their stated intention to release the Second Life server code to the Open Source community for some time now. According to Ginsu Yoon, Linden Lab's VP business affairs however …

Slacker Snares $40 Million — If Last.fm was worth $280 million after raising just $5 million in venture capital, what about a social music company that's raised more than $50 million? We may soon find out with Slacker Inc. — peHUB has learned that San Diego-based Slacker recently raised $40 million …

Google buys RSS company FeedBurner — Google has acquired another medium for its advertising engine by purchasing FeedBurner, a company that distributes syndicated content for blogs and other media Web sites, the companies said Friday. — Terms of the deal were not disclosed …

Apple criticized for embedding names, e-mails in songs — It used to be that music fans believed cryptic messages about Satan or the death of a band member were hidden within rock albums. — Nowadays, the secrets buried in digital music are way too easy to find, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).